


the last one

by tsuzurao



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Gen Work, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-25 11:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4959652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuzurao/pseuds/tsuzurao
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he is not ready to be in a world alone without catherine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the last one

**Author's Note:**

> this takes a few liberties with the ending, obviously, since simon's fate on phi is left pretty ambiguous, as is the general state of phi after the ARK was launched.

           silence like simon never dreamed could exist surrounds him for what feels like hours, maybe even days. silence, except for the error notifications on a cracked monitor that will not stop reminding him that catherine is gone. it continues to beep, despite most of phi’s power being depleted. there’s no fixing the omnitool; he can’t even begin to imagine how it could be repaired. the power can’t be turned back on either, but he has nothing to do, power or no power.

 

           simon has nowhere to go.

 

           but there’s no way he’s going back out there.

 

 

 

 

           it’s impossible to tell how long he’s been in phi without power or catherine. his sense of time has been fucked ever since he came to PATHOS-II. he can’t change the display on the beeping monitor to anything other than a neverending error message, and it seems no one on phi bothered to keep a watch around. he should have asked catherine if the future still had watches while she was with him.

 

           with nothing to do and nowhere to go, simon finds himself back at the pilot seat at least several times daily, if he had to guess. phi isn’t a big enough site for him to properly stretch his legs so the pilot seat with a broken omnitool is the most interesting thing for him to see. he can’t deny that his optimism, however broken, is at least partially intact. catherine did not say the omnitool could fix itself. deep down simon knows the likelihood of that is even slimmer than the rim of a penny. hoping that he might one day come back to find catherine functioning again feels like he’s sitting in a hospital somewhere waiting for a coma patient to wake up.

 

           simon has to do something, though, at least for now.

 

 

 

 

           having no one to talk to leaves too much room for thought. even back in toronto, when his brain injury kept him from doing much of anything, the possibility of communication was not robbed from him.

 

           now, though, he wonders where he could have been if he was born in this future. simon imagines he likely would have died on the surface when the comet hit, because working in PATHOS-II is too unreal an expectation for him.

 

           he starts to think about what he could have done differently.

 

           was separating all those people from the WAU and killing them the right thing to do? was turning off sarah’s life support the right thing to do? was destroying the WAU at the urgence of ross the right thing to do?

 

           was draining the power from the body holding his copy the right thing to do?

 

           would it have even mattered by the time he got here?

 

 

 

 

           simon never thought being alone could be so crushing. he’s probably the last person alive on earth, and he isn’t even human.

 

           he still has not figured out if he even has the right to call himself alive. the body he’s using is dead, but he has consciousness. is consciousness all it takes to be alive? he supposes that’s the kind of logic the WAU operated on.

 

           being alone for so long puts a new question in his head.

 

           if his consciousness is due to a cortex chip and a battery pack, would his battery pack eventually run out?

 

 

 

 

           sometimes simon thinks about finding something among the wreckage in phi and using it to smash his cortext chip to pieces.

 

           he is not prepared to be alone in a world with no people. he is not ready to be in a world alone without catherine.

 

 

 

 

           “hey, cath,” simon says, sitting down in the pilot seat. he gets no answer, save for the beeping error message. “long time no see.”

 

           seeing the monitor almost feels surreal, like he had never been here before now.

 

           “it’s been a while since we talked. i, uh,” simon pauses, “i miss you. do you miss me, too?”

 

           the beeps continue. catherine says nothing.

 

           “i wish you could talk again. i’ve been thinking lately, probably more than i have in my entire life. there’s...a lot i want to talk to you about,” he says.

 

           nothing.

 

           “catherine, please say something,” he says, voice breaking.

 

           nothing. simon chokes.

 

           “i’m sorry. i’m sorry, i’ll forgive you, okay, just—” simon takes a breath, shaky, impossible, really, or at least it should be with his corpse body and unmoving lungs. he still can’t believe it, can’t even fathom how just a few things put together in the right way can do something like reanimate the dead. except, the body in the suit isn’t his, and catherine is no longer around to talk semantics and philosophy with him anymore.

 

           funny how a brain scan can change someone so much.

 

           his visuals glitch, just a bit around the edges, and if simon had human eyes, he thinks he would be crying right now. “just say something please.”

 

           catherine does not speak.

 

 

 

 

           simon prys the omnitool from the station and the beeping finally stops. the screen goes dark, the text disappearing.

 

           he lays down with the omnitool in hand and does not move for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> please feel free to follow/talk to me on either of these sites:
> 
> [tumblr](http://yukinoyayoi.tumblr.com/): yukinoyayoi  
> [writing tumblr](http://nahoes.tumblr.com/): nahoes  
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/philiplafresque/): philiplafresque [please ask if you can follow]


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